daniel zomparelli – Raoul Fernandes

Transmitting via radio/pocasts

August 10, 2015August 11, 2015 RaoulLeave a comment

In July I was lucky to sit down and talk with Sheryl MacKay on her great North By Northwest show on CBC Radio. I was very nervous and rambly but Sheryl was very sweet and asked good questions. She also did a great job of editing our conversation so that I sound vaguely coherent. I read my poem “Transmitter and Receiver” at the end. Thanks Sheryl! You can listen to our conversation around the 27 minute mark , but I highly recommend the whole show which has stuff about wooly mammoths, stars, and crosswords.

I sat down a few days later in a slightly different context with the coolest kids Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli on their Can’t Lit podcast. To make it even better, my charming and talented friend Kayla Czaga was a guest as well. We talk about humour in poetry, age-ism, pizza, and play a fun family game. This one is much longer and giggly-er, partly due to Daniel’s awesome raspberry mint cocktails. Thanks Dina and Daniel for inviting me! Big smiles!

New Vancouver Poets

January 13, 2015 RaoulLeave a comment

Really nice to have a piece included in Lemon Hound’s “New Vancouver Poets” folio, among some of my favourites here in this city. This poem, An Ache in the Knot, will probably be the last I get out before my book, Transmitter and Receiver, comes out into the world this Spring (More on that soon!)

Thanks Daniel Zomparelli and Dina Del Buccia for being awesome editors for this folio. And Happy New Year, everyone. I’m going to try to be a bit more present here. And a bit more present in general.

Lion/Lamb

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012 RaoulLeave a comment

The last time there was a big gap between posts here, I used the excuse of it being due to the Big Life Change of getting married. This time, another Big Life Change: I have a new son. There’s a lot I can say about this startling fact, but this is a blog that’s primarily writing-related so I’ll stubbornly keep it that way. If you want super adorable babyphotos you can just email me. Oh, I will say that his middle name “Ilya” is partly inspired by the wonderful young poet Ilya Kaminsky (We wanted a Russian name to represent his mother’s part-Russian heritage).

Somehow finding time to write and edit. Not as much as I want, but knowing that I have much less time, makes me a bit more focused. And sometimes the task of holding a sleeping baby in your arms is a fine time to read complicated essays on poetics and listen to podcasts. I will post links to favourites in upcoming entries.

Meanwhile, it’s great to see a local poet I admire having his first book out soon. Daniel Zomparelli, the energy behind Poetry is Dead magazine, and vital life force in Vancouver’s poetry community will be launching his debut collection “Davie Street Translations” (Talon Books) this Sunday April 1st at the Cobalt. In the few readings by Daniel I’ve heard, the poems are powerful, playful, and unabashedly local. I’m sure that very soon after it being out, the book will seem like it was always a part of the make up of this city, or at least, the famous street that it positions itself in.

This is what poet Nikki Reimer had to say about it:

“These poems pay respectful albeit cheeky homage to a host of queer writers and queer icons in Vancouver, in the process redefining the possibilities for what it might mean to write young, queer, pop culture/literate, smart and alive on these crowded rain-sodden streets. Here glosas, palindromes, alphabet, palimpsest, concrete graffiti poems, pop music anthems and erasure abut a ragged lyricism, hell bent on obliterating every last stereotype and polymer partition.” – Nikki Reimer

Read a great interview with Daniel Zomparelli over at Rob Taylor’s blog.